Peter Schultz at The Scripps Research Institute

Abstract

Peter Schultz, Professor of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute, managed an extremely productive lab. This case examines how Schultz recruited, motivated and inspired the students and scientists that worked with him.

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Jim Sharpe, 10 years after receiving his MBA from Harvard and working for others, has finally become his own boss and 100% owner of manufacturer of aluminum extrusions. After 10 months of an unfunded search, he acquires the business in an LBO and prepares to face his employees on the first day.

In April 2012, Jenne Britell, the Chairman of the board of directors of United Rentals, Inc. (NYSE: URI) was preparing her notes for an upcoming stockholders' meeting. It was a meeting unlike most other meetings she had chaired. Stockholders were about to vote on a transaction that was perhaps the ultimate fulfillment of the founders' original vision. She was reminded of the company's founding just 15 years earlier and its meteoric growth. With a considerable sense of achievement and satisfaction, she reflected on her tenure as board chair commencing five years ago. Elected to the board in 2006 and then unanimously selected by her peers as Chairman in June 2008, Britell led the board through the aftermath of a tumultuous period that included senior management and board changes, a SEC investigation, financial restatements, the jilting of the company by Cerberus Capital Management in a transaction to acquire URI, and the deepest recession to hit the global economy since the Great Depression. At the meeting, stockholders would be asked to consider approval of a merger agreement between URI, the largest equipment rental company in the world, with RSC, the second largest equipment rental company in the world and URI's largest competitor. The meeting would mark the triumph of a new governance model and company strategy whose development and implementation Britell and CEO Michael Kneeland had led. As Britell reflected on the hard won gains, she also looked forward to the challenges and opportunities that lay ahead as the company managed the integration of RSC's operations with URI and the integration of three new board members from the acquired company. She also reflected on how governance and strategy could continue to evolve as the company planned for the next five years.

On July 12, 2012, Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Capital Management announced publicly that it had purchased about $2 billion of Procter and Gamble (P&G) stock. Shares in the company closed up 3.75% the day the disclosure was made public. Ackman told the New York Times that Pershing would be a major P&G shareholder. "We think it's an underrated stock," he said. "We think there is a lot of great opportunity there."

During the next several months there was little or no public discussion of the matter although people familiar with the situation reported that Ackman held conversations with P&G directors individually. Then, on April 24, 2013, P&G announced that its 3rd quarter earnings had risen 6%. However its 4th quarter forecast fell short of Wall Street's expectations. Shares fell 5% based on this outlook. P&G results were lagging its peers by 4% in 2012 and 2% in the first quarter of 2013.

Then, abruptly in late May, CEO Robert A. McDonald, who was 59, resigned. The board selected A.J. Lafley, (65) who had been McDonald's predecessor to return to lead the company. There was speculation about how long Lafley would stay and in what direction he would take the company. On June 6th, P&G announced that Lafley had appointed four senior executives to lead the company's major businesses, reporting directly to him.